Saturday, August 8, 2020




LAURA:  A JOURNEY INTO THE CRYSTAL

George Sand  (1804-1876)

Uncle Tungstenius owns and operates a natural history museum.  His nephew, Alexius Hartz, works for him, taking care of the exhibits and dealing with customers.  One day his cousin Laura came to visit. She expressed pity that a nice young man like Alexius hasn't achieved more in his nineteen years.  So he goes back to school to study mineralogy, then returns to the museum and meets Walter, another cousin, who is a rabid promoter of the coal industry.  While they are arguing about the importance of their individual interests, Laura pays another visit and inspires love in the heart of Alexis.  The two find themselves alone near the display cases one day and talk about rocks.  Alexis enters a sort of dream state in which he imagines himself and Laura being magically swept into a large geode.  They had been talking about the minerals that constituted the exhibits:  zirconium, jasper, chalcedony, beryl, sapphire, pyromorphite, labradorite, aventurine, gypsum, etc. and all of a sudden they found themselves surrounded by giant crystal peaks and spires.  They climb the largest edifice in the immediate neighborhood and gaze in wonder at the colors and flashing lights surrounding them.  All of a sudden there's an explosion and a brilliant flash of light and Alexius wakes up on the floor of the museum, having apparently fallen into one of the glass display cabinets and cut himself.

Laura leaves soon after and Alexius travels to the Tyrol mountains to study the mineralogy or the area.  Two years later he returns to the museum and finds Laura again.  She is engaged to Walter but doesn't love him.  She gives Alexius a magic ring which carries him back to the crystal world he'd previously gone to with Laura, and where she tells him she loves only him, not Walter.  Laura says that there are two sides to every person, the mundane and the spiritual, the physical body being the mere shadow of the spiritual, which encompasses the entire realm of time and space.

Laura's father, Naias, appears and interests Alexius in traveling to the inside of the planet Earth to find rare minerals and crystals to sell and make themselves rich.  Naias is a world traveler and jewel seller, and is familiar with mysterious, unknown regions in obscure corners of the planet.  Alexius agrees to accompany him and they set off for northern Greenland, where they hire Eskimos and sledges with which to make their way over the ice.  After an arduous trek, they reach a warm ocean near the North Pole, and, leaving the Eskimos behind, set out by themselves in a canoe, intent on discovering an entrance to the lower world and its wealth.  Days pass and a giant crystal mountain appears on the horizon, ten thousand feet higher than Mt. Everest.  They approach another coast, surrounded by enormous tourmaline crystals lying on their sides with the sharp ends pointing out to sea.  Fortunately they run upon a small beach and manage to land the canoe on the narrow, rocky shore.  After scouting around they happen upon a path through the cliff and find a vast expanse of grassland filled with prehistoric animals.  Giant bears, bison, goats, and aurochs are visible.  Huge beetles like flying buffalo pass overhead and the two travelers manage to lasso a couple of them.  They climb aboard and sail grandly over the lea until they get caught in an enormous monkey puzzle tree.  Continuing on, thornfully, they dine on thistles and caterpillars while lolling about on twenty foot long turtles.  Giant frogs sing to them.

They reach the giant peak at last, only to find that it's surrounded by a large lake with a 5,000 foot high waterfall.  But the lake is not water, it's a lava plain, with pumice seracs and erratic boulders lying around.  Approaching the mountain, they see that the plain descends into unlit depths.  Naias makes a rope out of vetch roots and begins to swing himself down into a sort of lava pit.  Alexius follows and they fall into an ash bed and forge their way across it toward the base of the peak, which, they see, is actually a giant olivine crystal.  The next day, after dining on vetch, they come to the edge of the lava plain and stare down into a vast opening below the mountain.  Immense crystals clog the sides of the seemingly limitless gorge:  Amethyst, ruby, beryl, sapphire, diamond and calcite crystals plus thousands of others, previously unnamed.  It seems, indeed, that the interior of the earth is decorated dwith crystals, like a geode.  Naias gets excited and leaps into the abyss.  Laura appears and, taking Alexius by the hand, leads him down into what turns into the garden behind the museum.  After a period of recuperation, Alexius realizes that it was all a dream, and that Naias never existed.  Laura's real father was a fat, jolly merchant, Christophe by name, who immediately consents to their marriage.  Alexius gives him a large diamond from his polar expedition, but Laura breaks it, demonstrating that it was merely a decorative adornment from a nearby newel post.  The enchantment is broken at last, and Alexius becomes a geology professor and he and Laura have two children.  Due to insufficient remuneration, Alexius becomes a gem dealer and they all live happily ever after.

Ms. Sand was evidently quite interested in crystallomancy, the practice of gazing into the depths of crystals in order to visit the world of the spirit.  There's quite a history of people doing this, the most famous of which might have been Dr. Dee in the 16th C. who claimed to see angels in his vision quests.  Self hypnosis of some sort seems to have played a role in similar experiences throughout history.  George Sand was an interesting author who led an unusual life, with many lovers and marriages and she wrote a lot of books.  She was also the girl-friend of Frederic Chopin for nine years, during which time she nursed him and tried to alleviate his tuberculosis.  Later she retired to her mansion in central France, where she reigned as a famous and well-regarded figure right up to her final demise.  This was a quite magnetic novel, especially for those interested in geology.  It was a surprising discovery, as Sand, so far as i'm aware, was not noted for her interest in the sciences.  But the text showed that she had researched mineralogy at least to a minor extent, and that she used what she learned in an accurate and well-reasoned manner.  I liked it.







17 comments:

  1. Magnetic novel? Priceless word play, my friend.

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    1. thank you kindly, RT... i wish i was a better writer: i read your reviews and they're excellent, then i read mine and they seem like a six year old kid wrote them... oh well, in the next life, maybe...

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    2. This old comp teacher would give you an “A” .... so be not so hard on yourself ....
      BTW ... minor adjustment to my blog’s URL...
      https://travelsatthelibrary.blogspot.com/

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    3. MP - I love your reviews! They're like a book report/review hybrid and I enjoy them immensely!

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    4. tx a bunch, Sarah... actually i sort of think of them as book reports like what we used to do in school instead of reviews... i don't have any experience or education in lit; my profession was in geology and auto mechanics, but i love books so i just do what i can... it's joy when others like my typing...

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  2. Hi Muddpuddle.

    Thus sounds very neat. The fact that part of it centers around crystallomancy seems creative.

    It is very cool that you have read so many of these lost world type books. Have you ever thought of devoting a single post devoted to this kind of novel in general?

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    1. i've given it some thought but it would take more work than i feel capable of utilizing at my age (77); there's probably more than one blog covering that territory, somewhere on the planet... i ought to search for some of them: tx for the suggestion...

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  3. OK, I am going to join you in the 19th century for this one. I have always wanted to read something by George Sand. Thank you, mudpuddle!

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    1. you're more than welcome! her novels are perhaps the epitome of Victorian romanticism, and being French, are even more so, but she does have a flair for the unusual which she intersperses into her plots from time to time just to keep the reader alert!

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  4. Very interesting. I only know Sand by her relationship with Chopin. I heard she was a prolific writer, but I didn't know if she was any good. I still don't know, of course, but review certainly makes this story sound interesting.

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    1. Ms. S is a bit difficult to pin down as regards style... i'd say she has all the insight of Stefan Zweig, but is more erratic in her developments of character and plot: she wrote a LOT of books and was heavily involved in the social scene, so it's not surprising that she produced novels that tended to be more on the undisciplined side... but still, after reading several of her novels, i think she's worth some attention...

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  5. Ah, I'm not sure if this one's for me but I would like to try a Sand novel one day. Geology does interest me but not gazing into crystals to find the spirit-world. I'd rather immerse myself in the world of the Moomins. But great review .... you've almost convinced me.

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    1. HOORAY: FIRST CONTACT!! well, no, but you figured it out! great to see your name, there... one of the reasons i liked this one better than some of the other Sands i've read is that it is not in her normal format... her other work is definitely 19th C. style: not unpleasant at all, but just centered differently than we, 2 centuries later, might find comfortable... her books are not all soppy with romance - she actually includes action in some of them - but she does tend to go on occasionally... you're so busy it might pay to wait until you retire, like me, haha, until you totally immerse yourself in sand... take care...

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  6. A student gave me a really beautiful geode many years ago. I've never considered staring into it to contact the spirit world, it is more so a lovely reminder of a dear student I really enjoyed having in class.

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    1. i was impressed that Sand had done enough research that she knew the names of some of the more obscure geode forming minerals... although she hadn't quite gotten to Miller Indices or lattice structures haha... the book was mildly entertaining, tho, and had a sense of distance in it, particularly in describing Arctic scenery... tx for the comment: i know you post on very different sorts of book and it's great that you can visit here sometimes... we are pretty isolated out here in the woods, so contact with others from very different environments can mean a lot...

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    2. Of course! Things have slowed considerably on my blog with school starting up in all shapes and forms but I am trying to make sure to get around to my most favorites at least a couple times a week, and that includes you! The 'couple times a week' part may not be quite doable until I am settled into the new year routine, but I will always nosy around and see what you've been reading lately!

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  7. I picked up a copy of Mauprat in a second hand bookshop about 12 yrs ago, and like found myself drawn into Sand's world. It was such an enthralling reading experience I began to slowly acquire her other books...none of which I have yet read, although you've just made my print-on-demand copy of Laura look more appealing. I wasn't expecting some fantasy/magical realism from her - how exciting!

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